


Bad Behaviour

by TaraTargaryen



Series: The Nuclear Option [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Action, Adventure, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fate, Fluff, Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 12:05:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6153168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaraTargaryen/pseuds/TaraTargaryen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Paladin Danse and Knight Adams are headed for Goodneighbour to see Doctor Amari. A short vignette on their encounter with the Beast from Boston Commons. Takes place before Love and Liberty Reprimed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Behaviour

**Author's Note:**

> This I actually wrote last night, while my boyfriend was busy playing League of Legends and I couldn't get on the computer. I could have used my iPad, I guess, but I prefer to edit on the computer as its less finicky. Touchscreens, man. I thought I might post two updates today since this one is pretty short. I've been tossing this idea around in my head for so long, it just felt so good to finally unleash it. Bad Behaviour is a reference to Magnolia's song Goodneighbour, the second verse in fact where she alludes to swimming NAKED in the swan pond. What a wonderful woman is Wonder Woman. ;)
> 
> Took a dive  
> With the swans  
> Out in the commons with nothing on  
> The mutants stop to savor  
> All my bad behavior  
> It's all in a day's work  
> When you're a good good neighbor
> 
> There is also a perspective swap! So be prepared to read the second half from the eyes of the lovely Adeline Adams.

_The streets of Boston were quiet tonight,_ Danse observed. Knight Adams walked a little ahead of him, taking a left up the next street. A proximity warning flashed across Danse's interface. "Wait." He ordered. 

Knight Adams turned around. "Everything ok?" She wanted to know. 

"On every single Brotherhood sanctioned map the Boston Commons are marked with a big red 'X'." No other details were listed and it made Danse uneasy. 

Adams peered up the street. "Let's go find out why." She looked up at him, her face flushed with excitement.  

Danse frowned. "I wouldn't mind, but seeing as you neglected to bring your power armor I'm inclined to order you to go around."  

"You're _inclined_ to, but you _won't_." Adams straightened her back, preparing to stand her ground. 

"Don't be impetuous, Adams, I'm not going to scrape your bloody corpse off the walls."  

"If I promise to deny you that honor, can we go?" She huffed in response. If she had been any other knight, if he'd never seen her bring down a deathclaw single-handedly, if she hadn't been _Adams_ , Danse would have carried out his threat. Instead, he resigned himself to taking her side, and standing by it. They ploughed on up the empty street. The silence was eery. 

 

"Why did you want to come this way so badly?" He asked wearily. 

"My son was conceived here." She replied shortly. Danse choked on his breath. 

" _Here?_ In the _park?_ " He looked at the mess surrounding them. It might have been picturesque once. He tried not to imagine Adams and her faceless husband, sneaking around the gazebo, doing the deed in the bushes. She really didn't strike him as the type. _She might have been, two hundred years ago,_ he reminded himself pointedly. Adams grey eyes were filled with disdain and she wrinkled her nose up at him.  

"Don't say it like that." She scowled. "Oh look, the old swan boats are still here!" Adams splashed through the pond, water spraying around her knees. 

A low, earthy rumbling sent tremors across the water. The rock in the middle of the lake began twisting upwards into a gruesome obelisk until it blocked out the moon, dripping with fetid water and stinking like the blackest mold he could imagine. Danse's blood felt like ice in his veins. Adams stood at its feet, dwarfed by the sheer size of its hands alone. It wore the remains of the swan boats as crudely-fashioned armor, and wielded an industrial fire hydrant like a raider with a pool cue. Only Danse had never been afraid of a pool cue. 

 

 **"SSWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA** **NNNNNNNNNNN."**  

 

The creature spoke to the night. Vaulted windows in the skyscrapers above shattered in a symphony of falling glass; stray crows dropped out of the sky; and those at safer distances erupted in flight, filling the night sky with oily black wings. It was the _biggest_ fucking behemoth he had _ever_ seen. It twisted its neck down to look at Adams, black eyes glistening with pure hatred, and raised its club. Danse's heart leapt. He needed to act.  

"FOR THE BROTHERHOOD!" Danse roared, his laser rifle igniting the air between them. The thing's head snapped up to him and it growled, sputum dripping from the corner of its mouth and it turned on him, lumbering forward, fighting gravity to remain upright. Danse tried to aim for the eyes, they stood a chance if he could at least blind it. He checked his peripherals to see if Adams had gotten away, only to see her jumping up and down and gesturing wildly behind it. Stagnant water was catching the moonlight as it flung away from her. Danse finally realized he was carrying her duffle, with all her large guns. He dropped his shoulder, still firing at the creature, losing the bag. He began backing off, trying to put distance between the behemoth and the knight, trying not to stumble on the debris in the streets.  

 

- 

 

Adams heart was in her mouth as she sprinted for the bushes concealing her duffle. _Excitement. In the wasteland. You fucking moron. What did you_ _expect_ _? To get mauled by goddamn deathclaw?_ A sob escaped her lips as she dove into the shrubbery. _You're no good for him,_ the voice in her head sneered. _You're just going to drag him down with you._ Danse roared as the beast _thwack_ ed him with the concrete pole, and she made out the indentation from his power armor in the building behind where he'd fallen. She scanned the road anxiously. _Get up,_ _Danse_ _, get back up_ _,_  she pleaded with him silently. She tapped VATS open on her PipBoy, frustratedly waiting for it to scan the monster.

"I'LL SEND YOU BACK TO HELL." Danse staggered to his feet and Adams let out the breath she didn't realize she was holding.

Her PipBoy blipped, _scan complete._ Her best shot was beneath the skull, above the shoulder blades, burying her nuke in its spinal column and severing the head from the neck. _Easy._ She'd done that a hundred times – with her _shotgun._  She cradled the warhead tenderly. It weighed about the same as Shaun the first time shed held him in her arms. She slung it into the projector slide, clicking the launching piece together and whispering an empty prayer. The beast flailed as Danse too out one of its' eyes, and Adams took aim, held her breath, and fired.  

 

 _Red. Hot. Terror._ Nathaniel's face, filled with concern. Their baby crying as they descended into darkness.

And then... "Adams." She twitched her head in the direction of the sound. "Adams." She was enveloped in cool steel, and a low moan echoed in her skull. "Knight Adams. You're alive. Wake up." She reached up to touch his face. His beard felt scruff and coarse under her fingers, and she sighed, opening her eyes.  

"I still want to live." She croaked up at him. Soulful brown eyes gazed mournfully into hers, and Adams longed to see him smile.  

"I'm glad to hear it," he replied quietly.  

"I'm sorry," she choked. Danse chuckled, eyes turning up at the corners, and to both their astonishments he burst out laughing. Adams was confused as her gruff, serious commanding officer laughed, the sound coming from someplace deep inside him, and echoed across the Commons. He released her, and flopped back into the overgrown weeds, _howling_. Adams giggled nervously, and soon her laughter joined his. She laughed until she cried and her stomach ached, and laughed some more. 

 

They moved to the groundskeeper's shack, taking shelter. "What was that all about?" Adams asked, still amused. Danse looked at his feet. 

"I don't know. Ever since I took down Cutler, the job stopped being fun. Maybe it was after that, or before. I don't know. But when I killed Cutler, I felt like... something was missing from my life. It became about glory and honor, and how skilled I was and how many enemies I defeated in our name. I stopped being afraid for my life. I've become jaded, and bored." He paused, cracking his knuckles.  

"And now?" Adams drew her bedroll around her like a blanket, shivering slightly. 

"Tell me something, knight. Are you happy?" His brown eyes were serious, his full lips turned down in a tiny frown. Adams was taken aback. 

"I... I don't know." She hugged herself. "When my husband died, when my baby was stolen... I thought I'd never feel happy again." She searched for the emptiness again. "But now, with the Brotherhood behind me and my son a genocidal old man? I have a life. I don't equate me now with me before the war. It was a dream, a pleasant dream, but it's not reality. Reality is here and now, it's fighting and succeeding and doing it all over again. Reality is you."  

 

She gave him a soft smile. His eyebrows were raised in surprise. "It's me?" He replied, skeptical. 

Adams shrugged. "You gave me a purpose. I was fully prepared to walk away after Arc-Jet." 

"Why didn't you?" Danse countered. His jaw was set, and the warm chocolate pools of his eyes gazed at her curiously from between his thick, dark lashes. _No man has the right to look that good after fighting a super mutant behemoth,_ Adams thought, quickly averting her eyes.  

"Because you asked me to. Because the whole way to Arc-Jet, you spoke to me with such conviction and belief in your purpose. I wanted to feel that. I've admired you from the moment I dusted you off  at Cambridge. After Fort Strong, I realized I'd never had a friend like you. You treat me like a human being, a normal person, you show me respect and dignity. You've never asked me to give more than I am. I almost got you killed today." Adams dropped her head into her hands. 

Danse snorted. "That doesn't bother me." His eyes were soft. "What bothers me is how reckless you are. I'm your sponsor, I care about what happens to you. When you said before that you still wanted to live, I felt relieved. If taking down our Swan made it happen, I can live with that. I'll go out and do it again tomorrow." 

 

Adams felt warm in spite of the cold. " _Our swan_ _?_ " She raised an eyebrow. Danse wordlessly passed her some torn pages from the journal of Edgar Swann, yellow and curling at the edges. Swann had been an Institute lab rat for FEV testing. Adams read them and re-read them in disbelief. "There's no end to it, is there?" She muttered.  

"Nothing they won't do." Danse agreed morosely, his face dark. Adams looked over at him. 

"What about you? Still bored and jaded?" She asked, not unkindly.  

He smiled at her. "I could never be bored with you around. You're a magnet for trouble." He chuckled, and Adams loved the sound. She wanted to record it on a holotape and keep it for lonely nights. "And I may have been jaded in the past, but I don't feel that way now." 

"How do you feel?" Adams asked sleepily.  

"Hopeful." He replied thoughtfully. "Get some sleep. I have a lot to think about, and a report to write."  

Adams tucked herself into her bedroll, stealing half-awake glances at Danse. He didn't look back, just sat stoically in the dark, guarding her from monsters as she drifted into sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I love killing Swan. The first time I ran around the Boston Commons I headed straight for the pond, I had no idea what came next. Oh what's this cool lump of weeds?! 
> 
> It wasn't a lump of weeds, guys. Anyway I somehow brought him down with a couple of missiles, I think, and I just sat on my couch laughing hysterically. A video game gave me an adrenaline rush and a laughing high. Moments like discovering Swan for the first time make the Fallout franchise great, in my opinion.
> 
> Oh! My PipBoy iPhone case came in the mail today. I love it so much and I just wanted to share that with some other hardcore Fallout fans because my friends think I'm crazy.


End file.
